


Not Going To Work

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Series: Working It Out [2]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-07
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 11:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/674141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blair is really, really not panicking.  A sequel to How It Works</p><p>Posted February 2007 at 852 Prospect</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Going To Work

**Author's Note:**

> Original notes from 852 are in the body of the work.

  
Yes, it would have been more sensible to have incorporated this set of small stories into one file, but I really thought that 'How It Works' was just going to be some angsty stand-alone. Never assume.

* * *

I'm not freaking out. 

Okay. Yes, I am sort of, but this is pretty mild compared to some of the panicking I've done in my time. I'm still functional. My heart is going like I've main-lined about ten espressos, but that just means I look jittery, and hyper. Normal state of being for me, that's what most people would tell you. 

Jim, for example. Jim takes non-jittery to an art form. Statues could learn from Jim Ellison's stone-face. But unlike your average statue, there's a lot going on behind the impassivity. Hidden depths. 

I think my take on this lecture on the ethnographic tradition in domestic cultural studies is starting to wobble. But it's nearly over, and then I'm going to meet Lianna for lunch, enjoy some multi-disciplinary communication, and that makes me smile at an inappropriate part of my notes. Discipline. Now there's a word that goes all sorts of places. A field of study. Regulation. Control. Restraint. Punishment. Special discipline. Military discipline. And this lecture is over, before my own lack of discipline gets any more apparent. 

So, so totally screwed. Never mind what the hell's gotten into Jim, what the hell got into me? Because I'm willing to bet that the so-called normal reaction to figuring out that your best friend is stalking you when you're out - well, let's call it socialising with a female friend - isn't usually to stand like a peacock in full display in front of your voyeur friend with the telescopic, microscopic and any other `scopic' you care to mention vision. 

Fuck this. Instead of heading for the student union I'm heading for the phone, to make my excuses. Lunch with Lianna is off the agenda as of now. I have a talk to try and script out, because I'm willing to bet that Jim Ellison will be in his home tonight, inconveniently willing (for once) to listen to what I have to say. And stating your intentions in the warmth of after-glow and bravado is one thing, and carrying through those intentions in front of Jim is another story altogether. 

I sit in my office, my enormous basement office, of which about twenty percent is mine and the rest is artefact storage. But there's some cool artefacts in here. Right over there is the shelf with basket work and carved heads beside where Jim threw me up against the wall. I was kind of surprised I didn't leave a Blair shaped dent in the plaster, but I guess Jim had more discipline going for him that time than I realised. 

Bastard! Bastard! Who the hell does he think he is? My hands are shaking with fury. The boundaries have always been a little blurry with me and Jim, but last night - that was straight out creepy, and rage inducing. And I'm uncomfortably aware right now that bodily arousal comes out of a whole heap of emotions. I'm panting, and my skin is flushed, and my body feels poised for - what? Kicking James Ellison's pervert ass? I sure hope so, know what I mean? 

It doesn't help that the Rainier day goes mind-numbingly slowly. I feel like I could run a million miles and still have to _move_ so as not to jump out of my skin, and I'm willing to bet that the dragon with the designer horn-rims in the Bursar's office thinks that I'm on something. Nothing stronger than adrenaline laced with caffeine, ma'am, those handy drugs of survival. Although if I thought I could get away with it, a quick toke would be a damn useful thing - but no. Turning up to face Jim stinking of weed would catapult farce into disaster, if it isn't already heading that way anyway. 

I'm nuts. I don't have to _face_ Jim about anything. He has to face me. I'm the injured party here. I didn't do anything, and that means that I have control here, more than I think, and nothing has to turn to disaster unless I let it. Yeah, right. Which is why I'm standing outside my car in that lot a half a block down from the loft, looking at the uncommunicative walls and blank windows that you see from the Prospect street-side, and remembering a few times that Jim Ellison lost his stone-face. Even then, no jitters from Jim, no, my good friend is always a very purposeful man, no farting about from James Ellison, former soldier, cop of the year, sentinel and stalker. 

I start walking up the street. I'm calm, I'm relaxed, and I don't have a clue what the hell I'm going to say to him. It has to stop, I'm not your little fantasy toy. And if he doesn't say what he's supposed to? I'll have to get...out, I'll have to follow through and - leave, which is not going to work, no way, I can't _leave_. What about my thesis, what about my career? What about Jim? And how the hell did I know he was there, anyway? Why the hell did I have to get up and look out that damn window, when I knew what I was going to see? 

* * *

End 

Not Going To Work by Mab: [mabinbrowne@hotmail.com](mailto:mabinbrowne@hotmail.com)  



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